Ordinary Time

Because this is a lot even for me. I'm going to start with my decisions as to what I'll be making for the holiday market.  First are guest towels.  I finished my exploratory warp and hemmed and washed everything. Here are what I've decided to make. A red patterned towel, though I'll probably make some in a forest green as well. They will be one of three patterns. This one: And these two: All the towels are hand hemmed. There will also be two types with border patterns on a natural color. Trees: And a red flower-like design: After I weave a bunch of the guest towels, I'll put on a striped warp and make more napkins like these: I'll probably weave a variety of patterns.  Now that I've done the trial run, I'm happy to take orders. I know some of you have expressed interest.  Along with weaving, I needed to do some dyeing because I have a couple of Sheep and Fiber classes coming up and I needed to replenish the fiber I use to teach spindle spinning. Over the...

With Easter being tomorrow, I needed to try my experiment using natural dyes to color some eggs. Here are what they looked like when I started. (They are hard-boiled.) (Those are weird shadows on the white eggs from the cabinet above.) I wasn't sure what to expect or it it was going to be worth the effort. A couple of days ago I tried using beets to color some eggs and this was the decidedly lackluster result.  Not very exciting, huh? Today I decided to try yellow onion skins, purple onion skins, and tumeric. (2 cups yellow or purple onions skins or 1/4 c tumeric in 2 cups of water, boil for 10-15 minutes, drain out dye matter, set aside to cool. Add 1 tbsp white vinegar to dye.) Out of the three the purple onion skin dye looked the most interesting.  Here are some eggs soaking in the dye.  Yellow onion skins  Top: tumeric, bottom: purple onion skins And the final product: L - R along bottom: yellow onion skins, purple onion skins, tumeric -- those are just blue eggs...

Easter will be coming and that means egg dyeing. My crew haven't had much interest in dyeing eggs for a couple of years, and when egg prices were so high and the chickens weren't laying, this was not a bad thing to my mind. We still tend to boil a few dozen eggs, though, for egg salad sandwiches to have for Easter lunch. With the hens all laying again (13 yesterday, 9 today for example), I will probably boil several dozen.  And then I came across this. (credit goes to littlepinelearners.com ) Aside from the hibiscus flowers, the rest I typically keep in my kitchen or can easily purchase. Even better, this way I can boil the eggs and dye them all at the same time. I bet the masses might even be interested in this kind of egg dyeing.  Yes, I know Easter is still five weeks away, but by putting it on the blog, I stand a far better chance of finding this picture again when the time comes. And now you do, too. Plus, any little bit of beauty and happiness we can find right now is a ...

Here is the current state of my studio table: It's a well-known fact around here that my desks are a pretty accurate reflection. While my working desk is fairly organized, my studio table, as you see, is not. This is the combination of planning for my Sheep and Fiber classes which begin tomorrow and a whole lot of flitting from project to project. It is starting to bother me, but it was also the result of not being able to settle. Figuring out why is the key to me being able to tackle the chaos and move forward with straightening things up.  Step one was needing to do some dyeing to get ready for the classes. It's no fun to learn to spin plain white fiber, so I always try to give students dyed fiber. I have 21 students coming through, so that meant I needed quite a bit of fiber. I had forgotten a bit how much I enjoy dyeing fiber. Over the weekend I dyed 300 grams of corriedale roving. I always find it very interesting to see the differences between what the dye pot looks like ...

How about something other than sewing?  Yesterday was a fiber workshop day and the participants and I did a little natural dyeing. I still had a bunch of goldenrod in the yard, so that is what we used. Here's how it turned out.  This is some Club Forest fleece that the same group and I washed a while back. It came out a really interesting yellowy-green color. There still seemed to be quite a bit of color in the pot, so I have another batch cooling. Since it is an exhaust batch, I anticipate it being a little lighter. It could make a nice gradient all spun up.  I also finished threading the loom and am on the last step before beginning to weave. I'm very excited to see what this looks like woven. And those socks I mentioned I was going to knit? Well, they're not socks anymore. When I bought the yarn, I guess I didn't look at the label carefully because it's a super wash wool. I don't know what I was thinking because I don't really care for super wash wool. Th...

Are you ready for this? I think I have been experiencing stress crafting this week. Usually when the state of the world feels more than a little precarious I engage in stress canning, but that takes lots of cooking and boiling water, none of which sounds remotely appealing without air conditioning. So I guess my fallback is making things. I'm not even sure where to start.  How about with some fleece? Last fall at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival (the one where I wasn't going to buy anything), I came home with a beautiful corriedale fleece that was several shades of grey. I washed it before it got too cold and it has been living in a closet ever since. A few days ago I decided I really needed to get it out and take a look at it, which is why I spent quite a bit of time separating three pounds of fleece into separate shades.  The dark grey is the smallest pile that you can there in the back. And since I had it out it made sense to do some sampling to see how it sound up. Th...